Just Wage as Health Determinant

Zera Yacob critiqued systems where labor enriches owners while workers remain impoverished. Applied to health: wages below subsistence are weapons against health. A just wage must cover not minimum survival but health flourishing: nutritious food for immune function, shelter protecting from disease, rest preventing stress-related illness, and access to healthcare. Current wage structures often violate this standard systematically. Gig workers, agricultural laborers, and service workers frequently cannot meet these needs. Yacob's framework positions just wages as health policy. When employers or systems design wages below living costs, they are actively creating illness. Conversely, ensuring adequate compensation becomes preventive medicine on a societal scale. This concept challenges the false separation of labor economics from public health, showing them as the same problem viewed from different angles.